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The Facilitation Game

8 February 2015

How good are you at holding a conversation, whilst at the same time keeping a note of the time, holding on to the agenda, managing tricky personalities, catching key points and encouraging quiet people to speak up whilst reining in the verbose ones?

On a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high) score yourself for your facilitation skills?

And then consider that the next time you have a key meeting it might be productive to hire, borrow or volunteer a skilful facilitator to enable your meeting to run smoothly.

If you are trying to think through essential strategic plans, collate opinions and agree goals, or take time away from your organisation to create new directions with a senior team, then why not make use of a facilitator?

It’s very hard to be in the team, lead the team and manage the team all at the same time and from the same place.

So this week think about playing the facilitation game and set you and your colleagues up for success, by having a properly managed meeting.

This post was inspired by a piece of facilitation I did for a client a few weeks ago, that enabled a diverse team to choose new strategic initiatives. At the end of the piece I was struck that the group made several thoughtful decisions and admitted that without my support they would have foundered as they did before.

We can all reduce the risk of failure and can invest in our future success by recognising the value a facilitator brings.

Next week: Putting The Beach Into Coaching